Winning and Losing
by gentillealouette
Summary: He wants to not just succeed, but to outshine everybody, to be not just strong but the strongest. Oneshot.


Hello! So this is the longest thing I've written in quite a while (I'm so bad at finishing things) and I'm pretty excited to share it here! Be warned though that it has kuroshipping (or Touya/Cheren) as a pretty major theme. A lot of it is RP canon too, so suspend disbelief for a while! I also wanna say thank you while I'm here to everyone who's been reviewing, favouriting and watching my stories, ugh I love you all so much and I promise to update Tomorrow Tomorrow as soon as possible. I have so many lofty aspirations for that fic and now I can't even write one bloody chapter!

All righty, enjoy.

**Winning and Losing**

**1.**

The first time he holds a Pokéball in his hand, Cheren knows one thing and he knows it for sure: he wants to be a winner. He wants to not just succeed, but to outshine everybody, to be not just strong but the strongest. He wants to win. And, facing Touya in his bedroom on that fateful morning, he does.

That's his first taste of victory, superiority, of physical power. Cheren pushes his glasses up his nose and smiles and shakes Touya's hand, and prepares himself for a prosperous journey.

**2.**

What follows, over the next year, is not what he expects; the next time they meet, he loses, and the time after that, and the time after that.

Cheren manages to pick off Gym Leaders one by painstaking one. Of course, the Team Plasma grunts hardly pose a challenge, but Cheren isn't interested in brainless fanatics – Cheren is interested in strength and nobility. And somehow he can't seem to grasp either.

Touya, however, pulls it off without even trying. Cheren watches his friend as they progress through their travels: watches him emerge from each Gym triumphantly bedraggled, watches his own team (his beautifully, carefully raised team, his pride and joy) be pummelled time and time again apparently without effort by his carefree best friend. Cheren watches Touya's face shift easily from concern to laughter as he restores his Pokémon – takes in the flushed cheeks, the guileless eyes, the animated movements of his mouth, lips and tongue and little teeth. Cheren watches Touya taking the Light Stone from Lenora at Nacrene City with a look of grim forbearance, watches Touya defeat the King of Team Plasma and later the Champion, watches Touya steal everything that should have been his. He watches, and something bigger and realer than jealousy settles upon him. Warmer and worse.

Cheren _tries. _He tries and he tries, and the most he ever gets is a weary chuckle from Alder and a shake of the head. And meanwhile Touya returns to Nuvema, having consolidated his victory, and eventually N comes back as well –

**3.**

The first time he sees them together, Cheren almost lets his composure slip. They're deep in conversation. N's arms are slung over those soft shoulders comfortably, as if they belong there, and Touya almost doesn't notice the other trainer until Cheren clears his throat and politely enquires as to when they became 'official'.

N doesn't trust him, and he knows it. He doesn't trust N either. It's not that Cheren isn't willing to forgive, or to believe in change – it's more the piercing glares the King sends his way every time he tries to get close to his friend, the interrogations and the warped 'friendship' N forces upon him – it's the weeks-long disappearances, it's Touya sitting by Cheren's feet with tears in his eyes, mumbling:

"I miss him. I miss him. I miss him."

**4.**

He expects the hurt, really, he expects the rejection and the bitterness and the way that eventually he can hardly bear to look Touya in the face, wondering if there's an inch of skin there that N hasn't marked with his 'love', wondering if there's any room for the old openness and sparkle behind those eyes. He expects all of that.

What he does not expect is Wallace, who invades his life in a torrent of profuse flattery and jaunty smiles, and who before Cheren has time to blink has become a constant. Within two weeks Cheren is being told that Wallace loves him daily, and can't take him seriously until he inadvertently manages to have all of his friends tell him that he's 'loose' ("I didn't _mean it like that_!" he exclaims furiously, and Wallace sniffs something about how people shouldn't lie just because they feel guilty).

With that aside, though, he begins to find Hoenn's Champion increasingly tolerable.

**5.**

Wallace confronts him one evening, unusually straight-faced and grim, about Touya and about his feelings and goals and about strength, and all Cheren can do is scowl and resist.

"What if Touya was in love with me, though?" he insists (which is the most ridiculous, implausible thing Cheren has ever heard – but then, so was his best friend falling for the leader of the enemy; so was Cheren becoming the loser). Wallace proposes Cheren confront Touya directly about his feelings. Cheren would like to propose Wallace go jump in a lake, but instead snaps back,

"How much more do you want me to dwell on how unwanted I am?"

Wallace volleys it straight back, face hard. Cheren realises for the first time that he isn't the only one who knows how it feels to be treated like a secondary character.

**6.**

When N leaves for the second time, Touya is beside himself.

It must be years since anything's made Touya fall apart like this, Cheren thinks to himself; he's like a child, listless and recalcitrant, caving only reluctantly to food and rest when his mother begs him. Touko and Bianca try in vain to placate him with trips to Castelia and Nimbasa, material gifts and generic reassurances of his strength and his quality of character. But Cheren knows, stiffly rubbing the Hero's back as he weeps into his shoulder, that there is no prescribed self-esteem solution that can dispel this kind of aloneness. This is the kind of unsatisfiable need that can only be triggered by one thing: love – another victory that should have been Cheren's, and N threw it away like it meant nothing.

**7.**

Cheren still aches for Touya, aches to be able to hold him and kiss his flushed, tear-stained cheeks and tell him it's all right. Cheren aches to be able, at the very, very least, to smile at his best friend.

But he can't. He thinks of all of his losses, stacked up against all of Touya's wins; all of his effort and his care, against all of Touya's dumb luck; all of his ambition against all of Touya's diffidence, and he can't. He thinks of Touya laughing in N's arms, and he can't.

**8.**

If nothing else, Cheren has always been self-sufficient. In fact, he prides himself on the strength of conviction that keeps him working himself to exhaustion without attention or encouragement from others – the ability to keep himself rational and motivated alone. For all of his faults, Cheren has never felt that he needed anything from anybody – affection, encouragement, approval.

He needs it from Wallace. The realisation hits him like a sack of bricks over the head when he is made aware that the Champion actually doesn't want him to achieve what he's been working for. Cheren has grown so used to Wallace's pleasantness that anything else begins to scare him, and he reacts in turn, glowering, shaking hands clenched tight in his pockets.

"Fine," Wallace says abruptly, "fine – kill yourself by overworking, become Champion, and have everything you wanted. Good."

"I will. Watch me."

"And when your life is perfect, and you have everything you ever wanted, and maybe even Touya, come see me."

"I look forward to it," Cheren hisses, and regrets it despite himself when Wallace stops speaking to him.

**9.**

Cheren does not get lonely. He bristles alone in his hostility for days, occupying himself with training and study and late nights – wishes Touya were there when he isn't and wishes he were gone when he is; wishes Wallace would stop looking at him like that; wishes he could just stop caring so much. Angry, yes; bitter, yes; resentful, yes. But never lonely. To miss somebody, he tells himself, you need to have wanted them there in the first place; to be lonely, you need to need people.

And he doesn't. All Cheren needs is to be strong, to be successful, to win.

"So you know, I'm not mad or disappointed," Wallace tells him later. "I'm sure you'll find happiness no matter what you choose, Cheren."

To Wallace, Cheren says that he wouldn't waver even if he were disappointed; to himself, he says _don't waver, don't waver, don't waver._

**10.**

Cheren knows that Touya can't sleep either.

He is curled up on a mattress on his bedroom floor, staring at the wall opposite, having relinquished his bed to Touya for the night. Every few seconds he hears the sheets rustle, the creaking of the bedframe, a forlorn sigh. It feels as though hours pass before Touya finally breaks the silence: "are you asleep, Cheren?"

Cheren hesitates just long enough to send the wrong message. He hears Touya take a deep breath and decides to hold his tongue.

"I know you think I'm dumb," the other trainer murmurs. "That I don't notice things. N told me the same thing, you know. 'You can't even hear'. And it's true. I'm not smart like you or N, Cheren – but I notice more than you think I do." His voice is low and uncertain, almost too quiet for Cheren to hear without moving closer. He pauses a long time, deep in thought.

"I mean, Cheren, it's not that I don't love you," Touya finally whispers, beseechingly.

Cheren's breath catches, despite his best efforts. Touya soundlessly crosses the room and crouches beside him and when his fingers come to settle on Cheren's shoulder, they find it trembling with the pressure of sob after suppressed sob.

**11.**

Both N and Touya managed to defeat Alder, but Cheren still can't even make his way through the Elite Four, months and months later. Staring hard into the mirror, he tries to believe that one day he will know what real strength is; what it's like to be acknowledged, admired. Validated.

The face looking back at him isn't the face of a strong person. It's a face laden with bitterness and jealousy, loneliness and anxiety, and most of all weakness. Cheren fingers the Pokéballs at his hip, and thinks that it isn't their fault. He thinks that it isn't anybody's fault but his own. He thinks that real strength probably can't coexist with self-loathing in any case. Wonders which to give up.

**12.**

Cheren still isn't sleeping all that well. His parents, noticing his ill humour and increasingly exhausted team, are kind enough to invest in a surprise holiday for him – much to Cheren's dismay. Touya sees him off from the port with a small smile and a squeeze of the shoulder, telling him to relax, it's only six days - he needs to take a breather in any case.

Hoenn is warmer and less busy than Unova, which, Cheren concedes, is a positive. He ends up somehow in the crater city of Sootopolis, being towed around by its flamboyant ex-Gym Leader – resplendent in silly hat and sweeping cape. Over pancakes, after his first night in Hoenn, Wallace tells him the story of his rise to Championship and subsequent unhappiness, and smiles bemusedly at Cheren's outrage. "You don't have to like it, Cheren," he says gently. "But you have to understand it."

Away from Unova – away from the competition and the company and the constant reminders of his failures – Cheren finds himself sleeping soundly again, smiling more genuinely, and, eventually, sorry to leave Sootopolis.

When Touya meets him at Prime Pier in Castelia, the Hero can't stop himself from throwing his arms around Cheren – "I missed you, I missed you, I missed you!" – head still fuzzy with Wallace and the morality of strength and Championship, Cheren hugs him back and nods vaguely – "yes, it's nice to see you too, Touya" – and lets his friend do most of the talking as they wander back to the train station, preparing for the trip home to Nuvema.

**13.**

Touya never exactly asks Cheren out, per se; nor does he ever again say, or even imply, that he loves him. But over the weeks and eventually the months, the Hero begins to spend more and more evenings in Cheren's bed. Sometimes – only sometimes – Cheren climbs in beside him and lets Touya mesh their legs together, trace the sharp lines of his jaw down to his collarbone with gentle, indulgent fingers, fall asleep with his face hidden in his shoulder. On these nights, Cheren can't close his eyes – hardly dares to breathe.

It is not Cheren's name that Touya whimpers in his sleep. It is not Cheren's face that Touya sees on every corner, nor Cheren's voice that he hears at night. Cheren is not special, and he knows it – he's a pair of open arms, a soothing voice, a kiss on the forehead. He couldn't say that the arrangement makes him happy, exactly. But it makes him something, and anything, he tells himself, anything is better than nothing.

It's irrational, it's unhealthy, but Touya wants him. Touya _needs _him. Finally, _finally_, Cheren gains one victory.

**14.**

Touya is considerate and never kisses Cheren in public. When they go out, though, he pays for Cheren's food and won't let him protest, and occasionally, on the train or the ferry, he falls asleep in earnest on the other trainer's shoulder.

He obviously knows what he's doing. It's romantic, Cheren thinks, in a warped sort of way.

"Relax, Cheren," Touya whispers, not unkindly, through a confused tangle of blushing limbs and shallow breaths, "it's okay, we don't have to if you don't –"

"I want to," Cheren snaps breathlessly. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

He will wonder later what he was supposed to be feeling – what he had expected to feel. As it is, it's humiliating and it hurts, and Cheren's hips bruise and Touya's breath smells and his skin is sticky with sweat and, afterwards, lying awake with the weight of the other boy's head still numbing his arm, Cheren thinks: _this is what I wanted. This is what I dreamt of. This is winning._

**15.**

He doesn't tell Wallace anything. Somehow, though, Cheren's sure that he knows anyway. When Wallace asks about Touya, Cheren waves his questions away as if they're ridiculous and moves the conversation along as quickly as possible. Wallace doesn't press it, mercifully; he seems content enough, for the moment, to sit with the younger trainer atop a grassy hill as their Pokémon chase each other through the expanses of water that swamp the city of Icirrus in the wet season. "They're not weak, you know, Cheren," he comments. "Not weak at all."

"I know."

"It takes a lot to bring out the best in one's Pokémon," Wallace continues absently. "Technical skill, of course, but – more importantly – love and respect. For your team, and also for yourself."

Cheren watches Wallace's Luvdisc spray his Unfezant with a blast of puddle water, frowning, and says nothing. He doesn't look up even when he feels Wallace's hand close over his own. One shouldn't, he relents, dismiss the advice of somebody so much more accomplished than oneself. Even if that somebody does happen to wear a spectacularly silly hat.

"You could achieve this if you found that you really wanted it, Cheren," says Wallace quietly. "The power of faith in oneself is not just the subject of parable, no matter what you might believe."

"I've realised."

"Then the rest is up to you."

**16.**

When Alder's Volcorona finally falls, Cheren and his Liepard are both breathing hard; two jaws clenched, two heads buzzing, two disciplined, competitive hearts pounding in unison. There follows the longest three seconds of Cheren's life. He watches as if from a great distance as Alder crouches beside the motionless Pokémon, murmuring a few words of praise before recalling it, and for a moment the walls seem to slope, and Cheren's knees are suddenly weak. Liepard's sleek head turns, trainer and Pokémon lock eyes and the realisation passes unspoken between them: _we did it._

"We did it," Cheren breathes. The spell breaks. He sinks, dazed and overwhelmed, to his knees as the exhausted Pokémon pads across the floor to him; they regard one another for a moment in the dawning delight of success before falling on each other in peals of laughter, weary and incredulous. He doesn't even notice Alder crossing the arena until he feels the hand on his shoulder. Cheren looks up into the lined face, arms still about his battered Liepard's neck, and Alder smiles back gently; something like pride hovers behind those weathered features.

"There you are, Cheren," he says. "The strongest of the strong. How do you feel?"

How does he feel? This is the culmination of all Cheren's hopes and dreams, all of his effort and stress and sleepless nights. This is the moment upon which is pinned all of Cheren's confidence, all of his self-worth. This is acknowledgment. Validation. Victory. How does he feel? Cheren thinks the question over, exchanges a glance with Liepard, and then looks back up at the Champion.

"Tired," he answers truthfully.

**17.**

It was relatively early in Cheren's travels when he was challenged for the first time with the meaning of strength and the responsibilities that accompanied it. He had regarded each loss to Touya, initially, as a fluke; hadn't even thought to consider the prospect that strength might not come naturally to him the way everything else did.

He'd impatiently disregarded even Alder's advice. "I'll never understand just by thinking about it" – so the answer was to push himself ever harder and raise the bar ever further. Physical strength, strength of will, strength of character – had he ever reached any of them? Not through jealousy, he thinks, not through resentment. Not through any amount of insecurity, admiration, even love for Touya. Not through Alder or Wallace.

It was a mistake. He isn't above acknowledging that. What an adult would do, Cheren thinks to himself, what somebody _strong _would do, would be to learn from it and move forward. Whether or not Cheren has finally become strong, however, remains to be seen.

**18.**

"Are you happy, Touya?"

The question catches the Hero off guard, and not, Cheren knows, without reason – it's uncharacteristic of him to breach that dreadful subject of _feelings_, and so openly too. Touya looks at his feet, smiling a little, sheepishly. "Sure. I mean, why?"

It is late in the chrome-stained autumn afternoon, and the two trainers walk pensive and undisturbed along the abandoned train tracks of Nacrene City. It's been – somehow, already – six months since that terrible, wonderful first night in Cheren's bedroom. Touya balances precariously upon one track, arms outstretched, wobbling a little with every step, while Cheren lags a little behind. He glances up at his friend and shrugs. "I was just wondering."

"Are you?"

"Maybe."

"And with me?" Touya wobbles again, and Cheren starts forward, arms outstretched, but the brunet catches himself just in time. He looks over his shoulder, meeting Cheren's eyes, and he's no longer smiling. "Are you happy with me?"

Cheren thinks of being weak, hopeless, pathetic, of being a loser – he thinks of being alone – he thinks of needing Touya. It had been his general state of being. He wonders.

"Are you?"

"Maybe."

**19.**

The autumn passes in a haze of unthinking indolence. Cheren spends his days with his Pokémon and his books, or otherwise in the familiar clearings of Route 1 with Bianca, Touko and Touya, who fall easily back into the routines of their childhood, carefree and full once more of idle, distant dreams. His sixteenth birthday comes and goes, marked by cake, candles and a horribly obnoxious (but also very sweet) surprise party. It's for all the world as if the past eighteen months had never passed, he reflects, to watch the four of them.

But they did. He knows that they all carry the scars and the medals to prove it.

Cheren politely turns Alder down when he's offered an apprenticeship at the League, telling the Champion that he has a lot of thinking to do before he decides anything about the future. Alder asks him if he's sure. Cheren's never been less sure of anything in his life – and maybe, he tells himself, maybe that is all right.

**20.**

They weren't together in the first place, if one wants to look at semantics, and so technically can't 'break up'. Accordingly, Touya doesn't cry.

"I've never thought that you were stupid," Cheren tells him. "I wanted to be you."

"I wanted you to be N."

Cheren smiles a little, wanly, and Touya smiles back – lips, tongue and little teeth – and reaches out to squeeze his friend's shoulder. "You're Cheren. You don't have to be anything else," he says. "That's all right. That's enough."

"Yes."

Autumn is giving way to winter. Eighteen months have passed since the first time Cheren held a Pokéball in his hand, the first time he caught a fleeting glimpse of strength, the first time he decided to be a winner: not just to succeed but to outshine everybody, to be not just strong but the strongest.

And maybe Cheren isn't the strongest, and maybe he never will be. But he's all right; he's enough.

Touko and Bianca have begun to plan a voyage to the region of Kanto, to challenge its League; Touya debates leaving as well, taking to the skies astride Reshiram to track down the elusive King of Team Plasma. Life goes on. Cheren thinks absently of Sootopolis.


End file.
